Ship Early

The first version is usually embarrassing.

Good.

Embarrassment means reality has finally entered the conversation.

Before launch, everything is elegant.

The product works perfectly inside your head. Customers understand it. Features cooperate. Nobody clicks the button you forgot existed.

Then a real person arrives.

Beautiful.

They misunderstand the obvious thing.

They ignore the feature you spent three weeks building.

They break something you thought was unbreakable.

That is when development actually begins.

I have learned to distrust ideas that remain too long in private.

Thought preserves perfection because thought has no users.

Reality is less polite.

Ship while there are still rough edges.

The market is a better editor than imagination.